Epson WorkForce Pro WF-4740 All-in-One Review

Table of Contents

Introduction, Design & Features

It’s tough choosing a color inkjet AIO: So many models are on the market, you may decide to just give up and choose one based entirely on price.

That would be a mistake, because you may end up with one that doesn’t fit your needs or one that costs you more money in the long run. Knowing how much you’re willing to spend is a good start. But zeroing in on the features and capabilities that you’ll need is the key, even if you have to overlook a flaw or two.

The Epson WorkForce Pro WF-4740 All-in-One has almost everything going in its favor. It’s fast, with excellent print quality. It has two paper-input trays with a total capacity of 500 sheets. The 50-sheet ADF supports two-sided automated printing, copying, and scanning. There’s a full range of wireless options, including Wi-Fi Direct and NFC. It has a compact design, despite its ADF and paper-input capacity. And the ink costs are quite reasonable.

If you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop, here’s the first wobble. The WF-4740 is priced a bit higher than you might expect, though you could argue that the excellent print quality and fast speeds merit a higher price. A bigger issue for many will be the limited capacity of the output tray. Epson recommends a maximum of just 80 sheets at a time for the paper-output tray. That’s way lopsided, compared with the generous 500-sheet paper-input capacity.

Is that a deal breaker? It depends on how you’ll use the printer. The WF-4740 is small enough that it may fit on your desk. Then you could reach over and remove the printed pages before it reaches the 80-sheet limit. However, if you plan to place it in a far corner, away from easy tending, then this may not be the best choice, especially if you tend to print long documents.

We like almost everything else about this printer. If you can live with the skimpy output tray and slightly elevated price, then it could be an excellent inkjet AIO for a home office, small workgroup, or family.

Design & Interface

Ideally, a printer shouldn’t be any larger than it has to be. In that regard, the Epson WorkForce Pro WF-4740 All-in-One is almost a textbook case in how to optimize the design of a printer to take up the least amount of space. The unit is just 13 inches high, 16.7 inches wide, and 15.3 inches deep when closed. When printing, you’ll need to extend the support panel on the output tray so that the paper doesn’t fall onto the floor. That brings the depth of the unit to 19.8 inches. That’s still relatively compact. Similarly, the control panel can lay vertically flat against the printer when it’s not needed. Or it can swing outward a full 90 degrees for better access or viewing.

Given its two 250-sheet paper-input trays and 50-sheet ADF, the overall size is about as compact as you can expect for a full-featured AIO. The 26-pound weight is also quite reasonable. The materials seem to be durable enough, and the outer construction felt sturdy. Time will tell, but Epson doesn’t appear to have compromised the construction in order to keep the size and weight as low as possible.

The trade-off in this highly efficient design is a smaller-than-usual space for the paper-output tray. The user guide and Epson’s Web site do not include the paper-output capacity for this model, so we asked Epson for the specification. It’s rated for just 80 sheets at a time, which could be an issue for some potential buyers.

The control panel is dominated by a 4.3-inch touch screen. It’s bright and easy to read, but has relatively subdued colors. The four large icons on the screen include text labels (Copy, Scan, Fax, and Presets) that make it simple to access the main functions. Swiping the touch screen to the left reveals three additional large icons: Memory Device, Maintenance, and Settings.

Above the large icons, you’ll see a row of smaller icons that aren’t labeled, but are self-explanatory. A drop-shaped icon brings up a chart that shows how much ink is left in the four cartridges. A wireless/no-wireless icon leads you to the network-connection settings. And a speaker-on/speaker-off icon lets you mute the sounds generated by the control interface, as well as turn on or turn off the printer’s quiet mode.

The options under the settings icon are less extensive than you’ll find with many business- or workgroup-oriented printers. That could make this model a poor choice for some corporate environments where employees or projects need to be extensively tracked. You can see how many total prints have passed through the printer, and you can see how many of those were black-and-white prints versus color prints. But there’s no way to dig any deeper than that. There’s no provision for logging in individuals or associating a print run with a particular project.

Also embedded into the control panel is a Near-Field Communication (NFC) node. If you have a compatible Android phone or tablet (Android 4.4 or later) and have the Epson iPrint app installed, you can touch the NFC antenna on your mobile device against the NFC icon/hotspot on the control panel. Then you’ll be able to print and scan directly from your phone or tablet.

For other types of mobile devices, the WF-4740 supports a broad range of wireless and Internet protocols, including Apple AirPrint, Google Cloud Print, Fire OS, Mopria Print Service, and Scan to Cloud. In addition, Epson has dedicated apps for both iOS and Android that can handle printing and scanning over your Wi-Fi network. This model can also print documents that are sent via e-mail as attachments, along the same lines as HP's ePrint.

Setup & Paper Handling

We experienced no issues or speed bumps when setting up the Epson WorkForce Pro WF-4740. You first remove the packing materials and restraining tape. Then you lift up the scanner unit, shake and unwrap the four supplied ink cartridges, and insert them into the color-coded slots. Once you’re done, you close the scanner unit, and the printer will begin its internal initiation process.

The WF-4740 supports USB, Ethernet, and Wi-Fi connections. You can configure the printer for your Wi-Fi network directly from the touch screen. That could be handy if you plan to use the WF-4740 only with mobile devices. Alternatively, you can use the supplied optical disc to install the print and scan drivers on your computer and configure the drivers to respond to a USB, Ethernet, or Wi-Fi connection.

Along with the drivers, Epson includes its Epson Scan 2 utility, which lets you initiate and control the settings for remote document scans from your WF-4740. You can preview a scan before committing to a lengthier full-resolution scan. More-advanced adjustments include enhancing the text or color, correcting the skew of the document, or filling out the edge of a scanned image with either black or white. The utility supports single- and double-sided documents. And you can create presets for groups of settings that you’ll likely use again.

The Epson WorkForce Pro WF-4740 can handle a fairly wide range of print media, including some types of photo paper. Both of the 250-sheet paper-input trays can handle letter and legal-size plain paper...

However, Epson recommends that you use the upper tray for smaller-size plain paper, envelopes, or photo paper. The upper tray is rated for as many as 10 envelopes or 20 sheets of photo paper at a time. The WF-4740 can also print borderless photos in a variety of sizes: 4x6-inch, 5x7-inch, 4x7.1-inch (16:9 wide), 8.3x11.7-inch (A4), and 8.5x11-inch (letter).

As previously mentioned, the output tray is rated for just 80 sheets of plain paper at a time. While we don’t have specific output-tray ratings for envelopes or photo paper—at the very least—you would need to scale down that 80-sheet number in proportion to the thickness of the envelopes or photo paper.

The built-in ADF can handle 50 sheets of letter-size plain paper or 10 sheets of legal-size plain paper at a time. And you can load in single-sided or double-sided documents for automated single- or double-sided copying and scanning. For fragile or delicate documents, such as photographs or artwork, you should bypass the ADF and place those items manually on the platen glass below the ADF.

You can copy or scan documents as large as 8.5x14 inches. However, for that larger size, you’ll need to use the ADF, as the platen glass can accommodate sizes only up to 8.5x11.7 inches (slightly longer than letter-size paper). The cover unit doesn’t rise up, so this model isn’t well-equipped to handle books. There’s no dedicated copy or scan button, but you can quickly access the copy or scan functions with a single press on the touch screen.

We had no paper-handling issues with any of our test prints, either with the trays or the ADF. There were no paper jams. Nothing ended up misaligned, misprinted, or crumpled.

Table of Contents

Epson WorkForce Pro WF-4740 All-in-One

Our Verdict:
This color inkjet AIO has almost everything going for it, including print quality, speed, big in-trays, an auto-duplexing ADF, and wide wireless options. The main stumble? The output tray.

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